Category: Reposts
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Going on the offensive – A picture of Scotland’s anti-fracking movement
By Ellen Young and Ric Lander Community groups have led the way on the path to the moratorium on unconventional fossil-fuels in Scotland, and continue to do so in the ongoing struggle for a full ban. The effective grassroots campaigning of these communities, who have fought the Scottish government and unconventional gas companies, is an…
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Your kindness could kill
By Amie Robertson and Ric Lander A poster in a Sainsburys in Ipswich, Suffolk, reads “could you spare 20p for a cup of tea? How about £10 for a bag of heroin? £12 for a rock of crack?” The poster asks people to donate to a local homeless fund and gives a contact for Streetlink,…
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The fight against fossils: are we beginning to win?
Tomorrow is the world’s first ever Global Divestment Day. I’m quite excited. The environmental movement used to be all about changing light bulbs and taking shorter showers. It is now getting organised around defeating the fossil fuel industry. How did this happen? And more importantly, how can it win? For years environmental groups had been encouraging people…
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Dust. Settled. Go Scotland: a 7 item to-do list
For two years up to September the country was in fever pitch with friends, colleagues, families and strangers debating and cajoling each other on every issue we have. It was all encompassing and it was fascinating – but ultimately it was leading up to answering a binary question. After we got our answer on September…
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Hope as Resistance: 16 Pictures of Dissent to World War One
The last surviving British veteran of the First World War, Harry Patch, died in 2009. With him dies the collective memory of a generation that fought, resisted, endured and dreamed. Living memory is a powerful thing. It can assert itself in ways the dead cannot. Patch himself met Tony Blair. He told him “war is…
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Crisis in the Scottish media: finding the phoenix
The Scottish media is in crisis. Except for the Sunday Herald (exceptional for other reasons too) every national newspaper has seen dramatic falls in circulation in recent years. They have become machines for reprinting corporate and political press releases, stripped of journalistic resource and critical analysis. BBC Scotland has been under relentless attack, quietly from…
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Every Day’s Election Day: Referendum Blogs
10AM The spoils of 308 years of struggle Last night, referendum eve, I was at a local Greenpeace talk with Benny Wenda, exiled West Papuan leader, speaking to our little crowd of 15 or so about how he escaped his Indonesian Jail, ran for two weeks to the border, and escaped using a fake passport…
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Extreme Energy Inquiry begins in Scotland
Green Councillor Mark Ruskell with local community representatives and Friends of the Earth members outside the Inchyra Hotel this morning. Photo: Friends of the Earth Scotland. The UK’s first public inquiry into unconventional gas drilling is underway in Polmont, Falkirk. The Scottish Government called the inquiry after the troubled Australian firm Dart Energy appealed to speed…
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The Green in the White Paper
What does the Independence White Paper tell us about how the environment would be protected in an independent Scotland? In one sense, not very much. The SNP’s document is a manifesto for a future election to run a state that does not yet exist. A lot of the contents is old news, and of what…
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New Gas in the UK: Battlegrounds set at Balcombe and West Burton
The community campaign against Cuadrilla at Balcombe, Sussex, is at a critical point. Photos from Frack Off. As the drilling equipment rolls into rural Britain the public debate has begun, accompanied by frequent TV news reports balancing academic consensus against industry bravado. Scientific and economic clarity on the disastrous impact of New Gas drilling and…